Tuesday, April 24, 2018

The Will of God

"Bloom Where Your are Planted"

- in my meditation garden -

I recently had a conversation with someone who came to me
seeking some “vocational” advice. She wanted me to help her discern “the will
of God” for her life, what plan had God developed for her? I told
her that I probably wouldn’t be much help because I don’t actually believe
that “God” has a specific plan designed and tailored for each and every one of
us.

I do not think of “God” as some sort of Super Being who sits
at the great control room in the sky with blueprints for the whole world in “his”
hands, a divine plan for every single individual. In fact, as I see it, this notion of a divine master plan may actually prove to be
spiritually dangerous.If you are always
looking for what “God” has “planned” for your future, you may well fall into
the trap of ignoring where you are in the present.

Priest and author, Barbara Brown Taylor offers this insight:

One common problem for people who
believe that

God has a particular job in mind
for them

is that it is almost never the
job they are presently doing.

This means that those who are
busiest trying to figure out

God’s purpose for their lives

are often the least purposeful

about the work they are already doing.

I find great truth and wisdom in this insight. From my
experience, people who talk about the “will of God, tryingso hard to figure out what God wants them to
do with their lives, are often quite unsatisfied or bored with the life they
are currently living and so they turn to dreams of some bigger and better
future, a future that they think “God” has in mind for them: “God wants me to be a
clergy person, or maybe even a bishop, or God wants me to get a different job or
perhaps God wants me to buy that new house I’ve been looking at.”As I see it, what is seen as “God’s will" can
easily become a disguise for an individual’s personal agenda in life.

On the other hand, I do believe that “God” abides in all
that happens. God is the Holy Presence, the Abiding energy of Love deeply at
the core of the cosmos, intimately present to us in our own individual everyday
lives. And so as I see it, the vocation of every human being is not to discern
God’s will but to be “purposefully” and “intentionally” aware of God’ ever-abiding presence right in the place where
we find our feet are planted when we wake up every morning and step upon the
ground where we live.

When I was a college student a poster on the wall of my dorm
room read:

Bloom where you are planted

All these many years later, I still think this is excellent
advice. I am where I am and God is right “smack-dab” in the mix of it all. So I
try to live my life every day being as aware and awake as I can possibly be to
what it is that I am already doing.

In the later years of his very productive life, Thomas
Merton wrote in his journal:

About Me

I am a teacher, a writer, and a spiritual guide. I am an ordained Episcopal Priest and hold degrees in theology, philosophy, and communication. I am particularly interested in the common spiritual insights which the many various world religions share with one another.

My wife and I live in the beautiful desert in the Coachella Valley of Southern California.